19 April 2011

One Nation Under God?

“When regulators don’t believe in regulation and don’t get what is going on at the companies they oversee, there can be no major white-collar crime prosecutions,” said Henry N. Pontell, professor of criminology, law and society in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. “If they don’t understand what we call collective embezzlement, where people are literally looting their own firms, then it’s impossible to bring cases.”

It reminds me again of a customer who wanted to learn more about Brooksley Born. I wonder what she is up to?

And if you're wondering about the title of this posting, I was reminded of Benjamin Franklin, who said (during the convening of the Continental Congress which resulted in the Declaration of Independence):

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Granted, the context is different, but the concept is the same. Are we a civil society or are we a bunch of sharks in a vast ocean of scarce resources for which we must fight one another by teeth, by wits, by trickery, by collusion, by any means all fair none foul? In a civil society, we hang together and bring alongside us those less fortunate than ourselves, because they are who we are, not alien but different parts of one whole.